Splunk AppDynamics Reviews

My main use cases for Splunk AppDynamics include APM, application performance monitoring.

The features of Splunk AppDynamics that I appreciate most are the business processes. These features benefit my organization by providing a bigger picture, not only of their own systems, however, how it influences other parts of the environment and how we are being influenced by other parts. For its time, Splunk AppDynamics helped improve my organization's business resilience quite a bit.

To improve Splunk AppDynamics, it should migrate seamlessly into observability Splunk, which is called Splunk Observability Cloud.

I have been using Splunk AppDynamics for around 15 years.

The stability and reliability of Splunk AppDynamics were okay. I did not experience unusual downtime, crashes, or performance issues; no software is perfect, but it was within the expected parameters.

Splunk AppDynamics had some confusion about the SaaS, no SaaS, only SaaS strategy, which wasn't clear. Some time ago, they committed again to on-premises, however, it was too late.

I evaluate customer service and technical support as good, seven out of ten.

Positive

Prior to adopting Splunk AppDynamics, I was not using another solution to address similar needs; this was our first step into the APM world.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing is that it was very expensive.

Sadly, I did not see return on investment with Splunk AppDynamics.

The solution I was using prior was Grafana Cloud.

What caused me to stop using the solution is that we failed to bring the product to our DevOps teams so that they could easily use it and learn how to use it, this is something we had to learn again. I would advise other organizations considering Splunk AppDynamics to take a sharp look at the whole Splunk product portfolio and how they merge to observability cloud, integrating many AppDynamics features; this is very interesting, but I don't know whether or not they are already there.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Splunk AppDynamics seven out of ten.

AppDynamics is used to monitor multiple applications in our company. Our company recently faced an issue with a mobile banking application. The tool conveyed that many people logged in successfully in the aforementioned application, and for others, the login failed. 

AppDynamics showed us at our company that the customers on a specific telecom carrier have a problem with the SSL certificate between the mobile device and our company's firewall.

In our company, we also had an issue with slow functionality in a mobile application that also belonged to the mobile banking category; AppDynamics showed us that it was an issue with the database, as found in database monitoring. Another use case of the solution is for basic server monitoring such as CBU, disk memory, Network I/O, and similar operations.

The transaction snapshots are the most valuable feature of AppDynamics. I find this feature valuable because for every transaction running through any application server that is detected by AppDynamics, you can check the code that makes the flow list and an issue, which can come from any functionality, and in our company, we can utilize the saved time for troubleshooting and reduce the time to repair and the developers can enhance the security and functionality. 

The solution is available at an inflated cost. 

I have been using AppDynamics for three years. 

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. In our company, AppDynamics has been deployed in the main data center and we have two controllers related to a single application, we haven't faced any issues related to the application's stability. The stability of the solution depends on the number of applications being monitored efficiently using AppDynamics. 

Our company has integrated AppDynamics to around 8000 end users. In our organization, we are using AppDynamics to monitor applications, infrastructure, and a few network devices. Numerous cloud-based applications in our bank are monitored using AppDynamics. 

AppDynamics offers excellent customer support from professionals, process, and technology perspectives. I would rate the tech support a nine out of ten. 

Positive

Before AppDynamics, our organization used New Relic APM, CA APM, and Broadcom APM. In our company, we switched to AppDynamics because it supports numerous applications developed in Java, PHP, Dot.Net, and other programming languages.

CA APM offers support for a limited number of languages. AppDynamics is used for end-user monitoring, while CA APM is used for front-end or back-end applications. Our company switched to AppDynamics for end-to-end monitoring, starting from the customer to the data center. 

Our company is an institutional bank with numerous customers who need to avail themselves of and be satisfied with our digital services. AppDynamics helps us reduce the response time and investigate issues related to the end user. Our organization has received an ROI with the solution. 

I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. The solution is highly expensive. Our company pays for the solution on a yearly basis, if we don't add new modules or features to the license, we need to pay $1000000 every year. AppDynamics is subscription-based and can cost between $800 to $1000000. 

Before choosing AppDynamics, we evaluated New Relic and Dynatrace. The troubleshooting feature is more enhanced in New Relic and Dynatrace than in AppDynamics. In our company, we have an instant or global agent in our application.

The NOC team and application support team in our company use AppDynamics to extract the root cause analysis for an incident, when evaluating multiple tools it was found that AppDynamics has more features in this area. 

We have an NOC team in our company that is responsible for monitoring the response time of bank applications. The core responsibility of the NOC team is to monitor the response of each channel, which is supported by a customer-facing application for the bank.

The aforementioned channels include end-users, data centers, and each vital component. I would rate AppDynamics as eight out of ten overall. AppDynamics lacks a DR architecture; customers will receive benefits from the product, but the value versus cost is extremely high. 

AppDynamics keeps up with the market trends in application performance management. One of the market trends is analytics performance, and AppDynamics addresses it with the feature of a smart agent, where you can deploy one agent and procure insights on the application's infrastructure, performance, and analytics. The vendor is constantly working on the development and improvement of AppDynamics. 

The performance and DevOps teams use the solution to drill down and find out the root cause if we are getting any high response time. In that condition, we have drilled down and checked out the calls and methods, which are taking too long.

The solution's most valuable feature is the response time from the end-to-end server. The solution is user-friendly and easy to use for everyone.

The solution’s pricing is high and could be reduced. The solution’s setup is a bit complex.

I have been using AppDynamics Server Monitoring for five years.

The solution provides good stability.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

The solution's scalability depends on how many user licenses you are taking. The solution is charged per user, team, or domain.

We have to pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution. We can raise concerns or send mail regarding issues or difficulties we face, and the support team will contact us. They provide support to configure things or to learn more about their product.

The solution’s initial setup is a bit complex. It took around seven to eight days to set up everything, including the agent and server name.

AppDynamics Server Monitoring is an expensive solution.

We are not using the alerts as we have different mechanisms called resilience testing or kiosk testing. The DevOps team uses the alerts. During production, they will get alerts when they see the CPU utilization going beyond the 60% or 70% benchmark they have set.

AppDynamics and Dynatrace are the only two tools that provide accurate or stable end-to-end response time. These two tools can show you everything that's going on from the back end. If we are doing performance testing or any testing, these two tools can provide us with every detail about what's happening in the back end from the server side that we can't see.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We use the product to optimize application performance by monitoring database transactions and extracting insights for troubleshooting issues.

AppDynamics significantly reduced our organization's Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR), enhancing team productivity.

They could align the product strategy to evolve as a complete solution similar to Cisco Observability.

We have been using AppDynamics Database Monitoring for seven years.

The product's stability needs improvement. They could stabilize the authentication platform. Additionally, they need to improve microservices monitoring and log analytics.

I rate the stability a seven out of ten.

We work with around 100 AppDynamics Database Monitoring customers.

The technical support service team could be more knowledgeable.

The initial setup process is straightforward. We need to deploy the agent on the box and connect it to the controller. There are various deployment options available.

We take assistance from managed service providers for implementation.

We buy the platform's yearly subscription. I rate its pricing a six out of ten.

In one of the scenarios, a retail company encountered transaction failure issues. The problem was not with the card or payment system but the database operations. By utilizing AppDynamics, the team traced end-to-end transactions and identified a database latency problem.

Monitoring the entire end-to-end system allows us to pinpoint performance issues in the database. Tracking the user journey helped us identify the issues between the middleware and the database.

The topology view feature helps in effective monitoring. However, this feature was developed six years ago and still needs to be updated. The application needs broader improvements and reshaping for this particular area.

Database scaling or migration projects play a supportive role throughout the development, monitoring, and troubleshooting phases. During development, it integrates seamlessly with the SDLC. It detects and resolves performance issues, ensuring database availability and minimizing downtime.

I rate it an eight out of ten.

The most valuable feature of AppDynamics is that you can easily determine the load on the application. You can find out how many users are using it, whether there are any response time issues, whether any errors are going high for your application's transactions, etc.

The solution's user interface should be improved. Since it's a GUI tool, traversing from the error to the root cause can sometimes be difficult if you are not thorough with AppDynamics. This could slow down the tool, thereby causing you trouble.

I have been using AppDynamics since 2016.

Most financial services sectors, such as banking and insurance sectors, use AppDynamics. The solution's user base is very high.

The solution's initial setup is moderately easy. Installing the tool on old applications like Unix and Linux should be much easier. However, there could be some issues installing the solution on the cloud. The regular pre-defined agents might not work, and you will have to customize and then use them.

AppDynamics was initially a startup. Later, it was sold to Cisco, which has been quite aggressive in its pricing. I would say the solution is affordable because it is widely used across financial service sectors.

Currently, the solution is on the cloud as well. You can have your cloud applications onboarded to AppDynamics without any issues. AppDynamics has its own SaaS environment and SaaS controller on which you can onboard your application. You will need to install some of the AppDynamics agents.

I used to contact the tools team, and they used to answer our queries mostly. If not, they used to take it to the support and then come back with their solution. Users need to list all the servers related to their application on which they want the AppDynamics agents installed. Depending on whether your application is cloud-based or non-cloud, you need to list all your servers. Then, a further installation process would be recommended.

To use AppDynamics, you need to understand the different flows. If an issue is currently ongoing, you need to check which GUI flow is being used. If you want previous data, it will be in the history, and that's a different flow. Working with the tool is tricky, but two to three weeks of continuous work on it should bring you up to date.

Suppose you are working in a bank. For your application, you can configure everything regarding the business transaction. For balance transfers, you can have one business transaction that will monitor balance transfers. There can be another business transaction that can monitor credit cards. You can configure different flows and transactions within the flows in terms of business transactions. Wherever there is an issue, that exact business transaction will start developing.

The integration of AppDynamics within our CI/CD pipeline has positively affected our deployment frequency and application quality. Whenever there is a deployment or release, we see some hiccups in AppDynamics. There will be some things going on on that server, which we can easily identify in AppDynamics. Only after we validate that do we give the next go.

Overall, I rate the solution eight and a half out of ten.

The use case involves evaluating a mobile application's performance and user experience. We seek insights into peak usage hours, the application's status, and that of secondary services, such as databases and APIs, to gauge the mobile user experience.

We also want to identify potential bottlenecks and mobile degradation. We aim to ensure that mobile user monitoring is effective, similar to other forms of user monitoring. Although mobile devices present a different medium, they aim to detect errors, service degradations, slowdowns, and other issues. 

In the case of a mobile banking application, AppDynamics Mobile Real-User Monitoring successfully reduced the response time from eight seconds to just one second. In another example, the tool identified an issue within the mobile app, causing lost transactions in the billing system.

The product offers end-to-end visibility. This means seeing a user's actions, such as which mobile version they're using, their operating system, location, and the specific services they're accessing. This visibility allows for effective troubleshooting of their session. Additionally, end-to-end visibility provides insights into how the application performs across different layers, such as the backend infrastructure, including application servers, integrations, and databases.

The tool offers many entry points to observe issues from the backend, for example, through dashboards or tracking business transactions for degradation. You can then drill down to specific user sessions to identify slow ones and trace them back to the backend to understand the issue. That's the product's most useful technical feature. 

The user session tracking feature is embedded in the infrastructure and correlates all lines, including API and database calls. It also correlates with other metrics from the infrastructure and database.

The only improvement I see is intercepting calls in a mobile application without injecting additional code. Currently, when instrumenting or monitoring a mobile application, it's necessary to release updates, prompt users to upgrade, and inject code into the backend. It would be beneficial if there were a method to intercept these calls without requiring users to download and upgrade the application. However, I'm unsure about the feasibility of such an approach. 

Additionally, there's potential for enhancing the pricing structure, particularly as scaling up can become expensive. Given the continual growth of the mobile landscape, revisiting the pricing model could be beneficial. 

I have been working with the product for four years. 

I rate AppDynamics Mobile Real-User Monitoring's stability as nine out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability a nine out of ten. 

AppDynamics Mobile Real-User Monitoring's support tickets are tricky. We are a major partner, and we get instant support. 

Positive

I rate the tool's deployment a nine out of ten. It is easy. The deployment time for this solution is typically quite fast. Most typical technologies, such as Java or .NET applications, can take days. However, for more complex scenarios, it might take a few weeks. Overall, the deployment process is generally swift.

The usual deployment process starts with a technical assessment. Following this, the appropriate technology is acquired. Next, access to the client's systems is obtained, enabling the deployment of the agent onto their systems.

I rate AppDynamics Mobile Real-User Monitoring's pricing as seven out of ten. Mobile monitoring is paid based on the number of instances utilizing the mobile monitoring service, which increases as the scale grows. Consequently, your mobile user count can proportionally surpass all other applications.

Our customers for AppDynamics Mobile Real-User Monitoring are enterprises. If they have a critical mobile application, I think it's necessary to consider a monitoring tool. When your business relies on it, you need visibility into what's happening—peak hours, virtual access, performance, user experience, drop-off rates, conversion rate, and other relevant metrics.

Integrating AppDynamics Mobile Real-User Monitoring with existing mobile application infrastructure is generally straightforward, although there's room for improvement to make it even easier. I would rate it at nine out of ten in terms of ease of integration. However, sometimes, clients hesitate to interfere with their CI/CD pipelines. 

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. 

We worked on the kernel, and being able to monitor our application is important. We have utilized some predictive analysis, and that seems to be the biggest advantage.

The real-time feature provides me with insights into what's happening. It also tells me if there are opportunities.

I still need to thoroughly assess the stability.

I am not very impressed with support. The service could be better.

Neutral

We previously used Elasticsearch. We switched to AppDynamics for its capabilities. In terms of application monitoring, the differences were evident. The shift occurred starting December, over the last six months, and has shown improvements.

We consulted the company for the setup.

The mean time to respond when there are no issues is crucial. It is about finding the right balance. If running transactions, you should be able to respond promptly, which translates into a figure.

End-user licenses are crucial. We have users who require consistent monitoring, and they engage with it daily. This involves desktop usage and professional management. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I'm familiar with agent-based database monitoring. It easily integrates and monitors various databases like Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL, with minimal configuration. There are also some advanced, AI-infused use cases.

It's better to enable additional metrics and custom metrics if needed, depending on the specific application.

It's made a difference. The correlation between database and application performance allows us to proactively identify issues that could impact the user experience. This helps the application team improve the user experience and reduce the impact of any problems. The proactive monitoring from AppDynamics definitely helps.

ASM deployment feature is the most useful for me. As soon as you enable the prerequisites, you can deploy the tools. That's one of the major use cases.

The downside is that it's a little costly. And if you get stuck with a problem related to deployment, it can take some time to get it resolved. You need domain expertise support to troubleshoot issues. It's not easy to get things done if you run into trouble.

My experience has been good. Both are premium support users; so it's for a separate, additional price to the licensing. Since they're [Dyntrace and AppDynamics] part of the core monitoring ecosystem, especially with the premier experience.

There are different levels of supports. So, starting from your standard support to your 24/7 support, then you have your engineering support. In both cases, you have to go through an assessment before implementation in terms of what kind of application it is.

Positive

We used Dynatrace, which comes with full-stack observability. Full-stack observability has evolved to the point where, competitively, you can ask how AppDynamics and Dynatrace compare. Dynatrace takes a slight lead here. It can do dynamic baselining and anomaly detection.

It gives a little more transactional insights and is more comprehensive. There's a slight difference, but not a major impact, in terms of database monitoring on both tools. They are both competitive products. One way they try to compete is in terms of APIs, but the only difference I see is that AppDynamics has a slight advantage in one area. We don't have multiple agents, we go with the concept of one agent. Second, Dynatrace leads in observability, integrating with other on-premises and cloud systems.

They are both competitive enough in the same pricing range. They are not so different, they are both in the same range. If you go and negotiate, they are the same.

The deployment itself doesn't take much time. Once you install the agent and enable the prerequisites, you'll be able to start monitoring.

The deployment is a matter of days. If the prerequisites are in place, it's just a matter of days. But the only thing is, in most scenarios, the domain administration team might not be aware of what exactly they want to monitor. 

In that case, we have to do a detailed discovery to understand the database, the type of application it serves, and the issues they want to prioritize. Based on that, we determine the metrics to monitor from both the AppDynamics side and the database application side.

ROI depends on the criticality of the application. If your application is super critical and impacts the end-user experience, then investing in this tool will make a real impact, and you'll get good data management too.

It is expensive. If you opted for the MSP model, you will get premium support because you're already a premium customer to them. If you're not opted for the MSP model and are on a standard model, then it is a little costly. It depends upon the number of licenses you're procuring. Based on that, you might get a discount.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.